As President, Obama Would Be Unchecked

America's founders understood that absolute power corrupts absolutely. To prevent this, they created a political system of divided powers, giving judges, lawmakers, and the chief executive ways to check and balance each other.

What frightens many of us about the possibility that Sen. Barack Obama could be elected president Tuesday is that he will be an unchecked, unbalanced ruler with almost no limits on his power.

If you doubt this, then ask yourself what could prevent Obama from becoming a dictator.

Could the Congress stop him? In theory, yes, but in practice, both houses of Congress are controlled by left-liberal Democrats who are Obama's ideological allies. Their grip on power will become even stronger as more Democrats win, pollsters say.

If Democrats win 60 U.S. Senate seats, this ruling party can block even the Mr.-Smith-Goes-To-Washington last chance for minority Republicans to prevent bad legislation from becoming law: the filibuster.

Oh, and forget about any televised congressional hearings into suspicious activities of the Democrat-allied shock troops of ACORN, organized labor, and fat-cat Democratic donors.

Could the Supreme Court rein in President Obama's power grabs? Perhaps. After Franklin D. Roosevelt's Supreme Court declared his radical expansion of government unconstitutional, he attempted to increase the number of justices to change the court.

Even many fellow liberals considered FDR's court-packing scheme a dangerous attempt to circumvent constitutional checks and balances. An unmovable Supreme Court thwarted this unstoppable megalomaniac. And thus was pushed back what journalist Alistair Cooke called America's flirtation with FDR's “National Socialism.”

Today's Supreme Court already tilts left by 5-4 in many of its decisions, such as giving governments wide latitude to use eminent domain, and approving the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law despite its restrictions on First Amendment free speech rights during the months before national elections. A single new Obama appointment might neutralize the court's inclination to restrict his actions.

At least three liberal justices have made clear that they do not want to retire if a Republican president would choose their replacement. All three may retire during President Obama's first term so that he can name very young and very liberal justices able to shape our laws for several decades.

Could the press, our Fourth Estate, stop Obama from exercising dictatorial power? Again, in theory, yes. But the mainstream press is liberal by ideology and has slanted its coverage to help elect Obama.

The Los Angeles Times refuses to make public a videotape in its possession — or even a transcript of this tape — that reportedly shows Obama partying with and praising Palestinian anti-Semites who advocate the destruction of the Jewish state Israel.

The liberal mainstream media has been unwilling to investigate questions about Obama’s and his web of far-left mentors, comrades, and allies.

When reporters talk among themselves, they describe Obama as secretive and authoritarian, a control freak. He has refused to let journalists see papers he wrote in college, his health records, and even his original sealed birth certificate. (In this latter case, one of his grandmothers says she witnessed his birth in Africa, which might make him constitutionally ineligible to be president.)

Could talk radio or the Internet deter an Obama dictatorship by taking on the government watchdog role that partisan mainstream journalists, Obama's lapdogs, refuse to do?

Obama has left no doubt that he will work with the Democratic bosses in Congress to impose a new “Fairness Doctrine” on talk radio. McCain-Feingold set a legal precedent for restricting political speech on the Internet, and a new doctrine might be imposed on the Web, too.

Such legislation would let partisan politically chosen government agents decide whether a radio or TV station will lose its license for failing to give all sides airtime to discuss their views of political topics. Thus, e.g., a Christian church-owned radio station could lose its license for refusing to give airtime to advocates of same-sex marriage.

After radio stations in Ohio and Pennsylvania aired a National Rifle Association ad critical of Obama's shifting positions on gun control, Obama's lawyer warned the stations: “For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.”

Obama's campaign urged followers to disrupt a Chicago talk show appearance by a reporter who has investigated his past. This is one more sign of what author Michael Barone calls the coming “Obama thugocracy.”

The Fairness Doctrine purportedly encourages more diversity of ideas on the airwaves, but it silenced free speech in the past. Radio station owners, afraid of losing their broadcast licenses, found it easier and safer to switch from talk radio to playing music.

One gets the feeling that Obama would be delighted to remove his harshest critics from America's airwaves by intimidating and killing talk radio itself. This government requirement of “fairness” would not be used to control liberal-dominated media: major newspapers, magazines, and almost all network television.

Could the people themselves bring a power-craving President Obama to heel?

After one ordinary citizen, Joe the plumber, asked Obama about business taxes and Obama

replied by saying that we should “spread the wealth around,” Joe Wurzelbacher came under media and political attack. Journalists who never had the time to investigate Obama's ideology and allies suddenly found ample time and resources to dig deeply into Wurzelbacher 's past.

His confidential, personal information was retrieved from government computers, apparently in violation of privacy laws. The government office where this happened is run by a Democratic appointee who contributed $2,000 to Obama's campaign.

In 2005, Obama wrote on the far-left Daily Kos Web site that, once he is in power, he would be able to “enforce a more clearly progressive [read: socialist] agenda” and “usher in a new progressive era.”